Kate Upton with her proud parents at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition partyWhen my friend Jennifer Lewis posted on my FB page that there was a dustup over Kate Upton representing a move from Sports Illustrated to use curvier models, I brushed off the comment, beliving that SI is a guy’s magazine and it generally prefers curvier models.

Even I gulped when I saw the phone pics of some of Kate’s publicity stunts. With the social conservatives out in full force these days, VS must be extra careful of their affiliations. Pics like Kate’s left may go down with drunken guys at Hooters or even Yale, but they don’t get her credibility with organizations like Victoria’s Secret.

Nevertheless, Kate Upton has done a great job of building her career — and let’s not forget her credentials as an excellent, award-winning equestrian. Kate’s an all-American girl. Just like rebuilding General Motors, such a woman might become popular again. Don’t count her out

As a former VS executive and Fashion Director, I’m pretty calm about the Sports Illustrated Swimwear issue. It drives good traffic and readers stick around our websites, converting to committed direct supporters. I learned long ago that our women readers love the same images as guys do — and we try to filter out the ones they wouldn’t.

We could leave it there had Sophia Neophitou, who just signed on as a key person in choosing models and themes for the Victoria’s Secret fashion shows, now absolutely brutalized Kate Upton in the public press this week. The stylist is also the founder of 10 Magazine and a major contributor to fashion’s obsession with size 0 models.

After her comments to theNew York Times Style section this week about Kate Upton, Columbus Victoria’s Secret executives must be choking.

We would never use Ms. Upton for a Victoria’s Secret show,” Ms. Neophitou said by telephone last week from London. And, while Ms. Upton has, in fact, modeled on occasion for the company’s catalog, her look, said Ms. Neophitou, is “too obvious” to be featured in what has become the most widely viewed runway show in the world.

“She’s like a Page 3 girl,” Ms. Neophitou said, referring to the scantily clad voluptuous women featured in The Sun, a London tabloid. “She’s like a footballer’s wife, with the too-blond hair and that kind of face that anyone with enough money can go out and buy.”

Simply stated, I am speechless.

I promise you that Sophia Neophitou got a call from Victoria’s Secret’s Ed Razek about her sudden role as a public spokesperson for the Victoria’s Secret brand. Trust me, Ms Neophitou will never speak this candidly about any model again because such snide and brutal comments from this loftly stylist do nothing to help the brand’s image. Nothing.

Carine Roitfeld has enough common sense to never make a statement like this and Roitfeld says she herself prefers the curvier body of a model like Kate Upton or the original Lara Stone.

I find this entire conversation disgusting — to call Kate Upton fat underscores fashion’s irrelevance to women who aren’t little robots marching to the drum of fashion industry people like Neophitou or Karl Lagerfeld, who recently couldn’t keep his mouth shut about Adele. What disgraceful people!

Now that I understand Neophitou’s perspective, it’s clear why Upton wasn’t in the Victoria’s Secret show — being too fat for the haute stylist’s standards.

Models like Anja Rubik are now front and center as Victoria’s Secret’s new sex symbol of 2011? Am I reading this right?

Let’s put the common Kate and haute Anja side-by-side. Remember that fashion monasticism doesn’t believe in visible sexuality in the same way that Sarah Jessica Parker is proud that she never had sex on ‘Sex and the City’.

We’re talking about a different breed of fashion female role model here and sexuality is not part of her mindset.

Make that Bombay Sapphire martini a double please … and don’t count out Kate Upton quite so fast, Sophia Neophitou. Mr Razek may just go around your narrow, authoritative vision. Retro pinups are all the rage in fashion this season.

I understand the female mind way better than you do — and big business in America. Victoria’s Secret doesn’t have a haughty public relationship with American women or the Brits either, now that the brand is crossing the pond.

If they wanted Karl Lagerfeld to bring his articulate stance on fat to the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, they would have ponied up the bucks for him. Let us know how your forthright commentary on Kate Upton works out for you, Sophia. As for Kate Upton — don’t change a thing, my dear — but no more balancing beer on your breasts, okay? Anne

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